LA, Inland water systems are no Flint, Mich.

In 2014, for the first time since lead testing began in the 1990s, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Plant No. 1 violated the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s action-level for lead in drinking water with a reading of 16 parts per billion (ppb).

A small team of LADWP employees live on site of this remote, 1911-era hydroelectric plant near Lancaster.

The finding was a tiny blip for the agency, which supplies water to 4 million Los Angeles residents. It has never had a reading above the federal benchmark in the Los Angeles Basin, said Melinda Rho, the agency’s manager of regulatory affairs.

System-wide, the LADWP has a lead reading of 6.3 parts per billion, well below the level deemed acceptable by the federal govement, Rho said.

Looking eastward, the story is similar. In Pasadena, the most recent testing found the overall system averaged 1.7 ppb, according to the city’s website.

And in the city of San Beardino, the lead content is so low it’s reported as “non-detect,” said Stacey Alstadt, general manger of the San Beardino Municipal Water Department.

By comparison, in Flint, Michigan, where schoolchildren are being poisoned by lead, investigators have found lead levels soaring to more than 13,000 ppb at some sites.

Most of the lead readings in Los Angeles and San Beardino counties which exceed the lead action level of 15 ppb occur in campgrounds, other locations involving transient populations, or are residential areas with very few inhabitants, state officials say.

For many of the those smaller water systems, the state hires counties to act as the water regulator, on its behalf.

Two LA County probation department camps flagged by state water department officials as being above the action level last year were tested in March and reported lead levels well below the 15 ppb mark, according to Los Angeles County Department of Health officials.

Details of two small water systems in the San Beardino Mountains, which state records say exceed the 15 ppm action level, could not immediately be obtained from San Beardino County environmental health officials, in part because of a manpower shortage resulting from the Dec. 2 terrorist attack at the Inland Regional Center in San Beardino.

According to the EPA’s Pacific Southwest region, just 0.45 percent of Califoia’s water systems are out of compliance with the with lead and copper rule, which show up when water is corrosive, as was the case in Flint.

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This compares to 1.5 percent in Arizona and .88 percent in Nevada, according to the EPA. The action level.

Both lead and copper measurements involve household testing. The action level kicks in for both lead and the much less toxic copper, when more than 10 percent of houses sampled test above 15 ppb for lead and the 1,300 ppb mark for copper.

Although Califoia has situations where the federal standards for lead are exceeded, by and large, and for many reasons, the state doesn’t have a major lead problem, said Lisa Lien-Mager, spokeswoman for the Sacramento-based Association of Califoia Water Agencies.

One of the reasons “has to do with the timing when most of the development took place in Califoia” — more recently than other parts of the country, said Lien-Mager, whose organization’s 430 public agency members are responsible for 90 percent of the water delivered to cities, farms and businesses statewide.

“Very few water systems have issues. They spent the time and the money 20 years ago,” said Kurt Souza, assistant deputy director of the state Water Resources Control Board’s Division of Drinking Water.

Califoia water agencies are very good at testing the corrosiveness of new water supplies before they are introduced into the water system, Souza said, a key factor in the Flint water debacle.

Although the LADWP plant No. 1 spiked in 2014, it retued to well below the action threshold in 2015, state records show.

Rho speculated that one of the houses in the 2014 sampling had been vacant for some time, causing particles of lead to build up in the pipe prior to testing. That would boost lead in the tap water readings, she said.

More than a handful of discrepancies were found for San Beardino County on a list of 1,200 Califoia sites which exceeded action levels. The database, distributed by the Associated Press, was originally compiled from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency records.

Some of those, according to more current state records, were well below those action levels.

States are required to provide water system compliance information to the EPA quarterly, but they can be updated anytime, the EPA said.

“Other similarly sized states, particularly if they have budgetary constraints, are likely faced with the same challenges,” EPA Pacific Southwest team members say.

The EPA’s southwest region includes Califoia, Arizona, Hawaii, Nevada and the Pacific Islands.

The state Division of Drinking Water, which nearly two years ago moved under the wing of The State Water Resources Control Board, lost about 20 employees when it relocated from the umbrella of the Califoia Department of Public Health, Souza said.

Only two engineers in the drinking water division are involved in error checking, he said, although it’s hoped that can be boosted in the coming fiscal year.

The barrage of media attention about lead in the wake of Fint has triggered a review of records at all 24 of the state of Califoia’s district offices, he said.

Corrections, if necessary, will be uploaded to the EPA site, he said.

Despite staffing issues, the department has only had about 120 EPA database errors over the last five years, Souza said.